Synchrony Financial bets on Americans’ growing pet obsessions

Most aspiring pet owners don’t factor in a $10,000 bill into the cost of adopting a 12-pound rescue dog.

Twenty-eight year old Berna Dikicioglu certainly didn’t when she adopted her terrier mix Scout from a Los Angeles shelter five years ago. Dikicioglu had a Rottweiler growing up, and was looking to get her own dog out of college. For the first two years, Scout was relatively low cost.

That was until a friend’s birthday party, where a much larger dog unexpectedly came lunging towards Scout, taking hold of Scout’s tiny paw and “completely snapping it.”